Detailed Reviews [Minutian – 2011 - "Repercussions"]

Prolusion. MINUTIAN is a Finnish quintet that was formed two years ago. Of course, “Repercussions” is its debut album. As you can see above, it’s made up of seven tracks.

Analysis. This album is quite uniform in style and composition alike, and already its opening track Hole can serve as a sketch (if not a portrait to a certain degree) of its overall musical appearance. The song starts powerfully with a hyperactive guitar driving a killer-heavy riff, complex and effectual, while the drums and bass keep up with a finely shifting rhythmic figure. In the end, however, there’s nothing really special about the move since, while repeated again and again, neither the riff nor the part generated by the rhythm section changes its initial form, lacking the diversity found in real progressive bands. The first movement is followed abruptly (yet not surprisingly) by a quiet musical landscape, which gradually takes the shape of a ballad-like tune with melodic vocals and sluggish guitar solos appearing as its most distinctive features. Then the two sections are repeated (this time the louder one coming with vocals), after which the heavy riff crashes in again for a powerful move to finish the piece up, with the singer ranting gloriously in the traditional heavy metal manner. Musically, it’s sort of an averagely-statistical modern nu metal band crossed with Tool and Radiohead (which I consider a semi-progressive act at best). From the ‘first’ of these there’s an intense guitar sound with normally no efficient guitar leads on the one hand and frequent returns to a previously played theme on the other. From Tool there’s the heavier and, at the same time, more progressive side of what many are used to calling Alternative Metal. Finally, from Radiohead the band gets a soft textural quality, which can stylistically be defined as a blend of something a-la guitar Art-Rock and New Age, which is in turn what the disc’s core/weakest piece, Give In, is entirely about. Of the other tracks from the album’s main category of compositions, In Circles is the only one that’s marked with some really effective guitar solos, one of which stands out for its quirky, yet beautiful pattern. Appearing a few times on the song, it comes across as a sort of its guiding star. From time to time, the pieces Cold and Tight, Undone and Isolation all take metal riffing into neo prog territory, while Three by Five sounds soft within its first as well as its last section and heavy all over its core – and longest – one, not alternating those as all of the other above tracks do. The album’s sole instrumental, it has a certain mesmerizing feeling and is the best track here, in my view.

Conclusion. While Minutian’s music isn’t complex and lacks the remarkable guitar solos, the band still infuses its sound with some quirkiness. All in all, the album might really appeal to fans of Heavy Metal, the alternative variety in particular, especially those who’re into both of the above bands used as reference points.

VM=Vitaly Menshikov: June 8, 2012
The Rating Room